Kate and WilliamThe latest royal wedding, between Prince William, second in line to the throne behind his father Charles, and Kate Middleton, is taking place on Friday, April 29.

For the first time in history, a royal wedding is being live streamed on the Internet, and with a little help from YouTube we’ll all be able to watch Kate and William tying the knot.

The Royal Wedding Streaming Live

The Royal Family have had a presence on YouTube for over three years now, with the Queen and her clan having posted hundreds of videos of events and speeches in that time. But the royal wedding between Kate and William calls for something altogether more ambitious.

As announced on the Official Royal Wedding Blog, the wedding will be live streamed on YouTube on The Royal Channel. Google has produced “a live stream ‘gadget’” which will air from 10am until 2pm on the big day. That means the journey to and from Westminster Abbey, the balcony appearance, fly past, and of course, the ceremony itself, will all be aired live on the Web.

The live video stream will be accompanied by a commentary on Twitter, and additional clips, photographs, and links.

Kate and William Online Couple

Although the live stream is the most exciting part of the news about the royal wedding, William and Kate are set to be the first royal couple to live their lives in an online spotlight.

Even before the big day arrives, we’re all being asked to get involved by sending video messages of congratulations via the Wedding Book on YouTube. As well as YouTube, the British Monarchy has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. And has its own regularly-updated website.

Let’s hope this means there is enough information about the lives of Kate and Wills available to mean the press can give them a little privacy.

Conclusions

Whether you’re a fan of the British Royal Family or not, they should be applauded for moving with the times and embracing the new technologies available to all of us. It means we’ll all get the opportunity to watch William and Kate getting married one way or another. That is, if we want to. but that’s another argument altogether.

Watch the Royal Wedding between Kate and William live here from 10am BST on April 29, 2011.

Google Video LogoGoogle Video is finally being put out of its misery, over two years after Google effectively decided to kill its own baby to let its adopted child YouTube to blossom.

Google Video Killed Off

It was really no surprise to anyone when, in January 2009, Google announced it was killing Google Video. This came almost three years after the search giant had acquired YouTube for a tasty $1.65 billion, and it didn’t really make sense to keep them both going.

Google Video was just one of the sites and services which were culled at the time, with Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebooks, and Jaiku also shuttered.

A few months later and the ability to upload videos to the site ended, but existing content remained on the site. Until now.

Content Now Disappearing

Google has sent out an email to registered Google Video users informing them that all content is now being removed. On April 29 the ability to view videos on the site will end, and on May 13 the ability to download them will also end. Effectively killing the site once and for all.

“Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content.

We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)

We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner.

This actually flies in the face of the advice Google was giving on its help pages, which insisted that although uploads were being disable, content “would remain hosted by Google Video”. But then nothing lasts forever, and users have had plenty of time to migrate their content over to an alternative site.

Google naturally now hopes those users will migrate themselves and their content over to YouTube, if they haven’t already done so.

Conclusions

An unsurprising move that was always bound to happen at some point, even if Google didn’t quite know when until the decision was made. If YouTube provided a terrible user experience then this would be a problem, but the opposite is true. Which means few people are likely to complain.

[Via CenterNetworks]